Week 1 of Training = Done!

Todo bien.  My host family in our training community (I’ll be here for a couple months) is super sweet.  The couple runs a little store attached to our house and my host dad buys and sells (or kills and sells the meat of) cattle.  When I first met him, he couldn’t shake my hand because his hands were busy chopping huge slabs of meat…  We have electricity and running water.  I am lucky to have a flush toilet and a (cold, refreshing) shower faucet.  The trade-off is that I am far from most other students, so I have to walk 25 minutes to and from class multiple times a day on a road that includes 3 hills and some scary dogs.  Good workout!  The trainees that are living closer to town mostly have latrines and bucket showers.  My host mom is sisters with another host mom and they have a deal worked out such that my friend Lauren comes over and eats every meal with me.  It’s a pretty fun setup, but the downside is we speak in English way more than we should be.  Most meals include soup and rice, and some form a meat.  Whatever I can’t eat, I feed to our dog Pinto (my host mom told me to do that).  Occasionally we get some delicious papaya, mango, or pineapple juice.

House with dog and horse

Hill #1 of my walk to class

Every morning I have Spanish class with 3 other trainees and our teacher.  I am in the 2nd highest level of our group (the highest contains a woman from El Salvador and her husband who served in Peace Corps there, and a woman from Guatemala).  So far we’ve been going over pretty basic stuff, but we are also starting to learn the Panama-specific things I really need help with.

After lunch we have technical class.  This is broken up into soft skills (leadership & taking on a facilitating role, sustainable development principles, non-formal education methods, etc.) and agricultural skills (so far we have learned how to use our new machetes, vaccinated baby chicks, built seed trays out of materials like banana tree trunks, and soon we will plan and implement a home garden for our host families).  I feel like I’ve become that obnoxious student who always has their hand raised to answer questions, but Lauren says I don’t seem too annoying.

Seed trays

I am already using my mosquito net.  There are no mosquitos here, but there are other interesting bugs and my host mom says the net will prevent the little lizards from crawling into bed with me (those lizards are everywhere and make an interesting chirping noise at night).

Safe, happy, and healthy,

Lila